Pennies for the Planet : Glendora Children Raise Money to Help Preserve Rain Forest

Glendora schoolchildren have dug into enough pockets, drawers and piggy banks to come up with a cache of lunch money--95,000 pennies and counting.

But the money is not going for chocolate milk and hamburgers. Instead, Willow Elementary School students plan to use it to buy about 27 acres of Central American rain forest for preservation.

Since the project started April 16, students have been lugging the coins to school in jelly jars, pie plates and lunch pails. As a postscript to last week’s Earth Day activities, school officials plan to celebrate the haul with an assembly today.

“I thought it was a great way to get rid of pennies,” said Suzanne Brady, a PTA vice president whose second-grade daughter was an enthusiastic participant. “She went through my purse, shook down daddy and went through her own piggy bank,” Brady said.

The money will be sent to the Virginia-based Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to conservation through land acquisition. For every $35 raised, the group purchases an acre of land in Belize to be added to a rain forest conservation area, said conservancy spokesman Jeff Wise.

Wise said the Nature Conservancy launched its rain forest program last year in order to give donors a tangible sign of their contributions. The Nature Conservancy owns the land; contributors receive honorary deeds specifying the site of “their” land.

“We’re just beginning to find out how crucial rain forests are,” Wise said. The forests mitigate global warming and are home to three-quarters of the earth’s plant and animal species, he said.

Officials of Earth’s Birthday Project, a nonprofit New York-based organization raising money for the Nature Conservancy program, said at least 500 U.S. schools have participated.

At first, the project did not make much real estate sense to some Willow Elementary students. “I thought it was kind of weird to buy land we’re not going to use,” said fifth-grader Shaneen O’Gara.

But after teachers explained the rain forests’ environmental significance, O’Gara said, she is eager to preserve the land. “If they knock down the trees, the animals would not have any homes,” she said.

By Tuesday, the project had turned into a hands-on math lesson. In Nancy Klinkhart’s classroom, kindergartners struggled to roll the coins into 50-cent wrappers. The pennies are due at the end of the week.

“It was hard,” said Brian Costanza, 5. “We have to count them in 10s and I get mixed up.” He was uncertain about where the forests were, but didn’t seem to mind. “Trees and plants are good,” he said.

Fifth-grader Ryan Stone agreed: “I thought it was a great idea, saving oxygen and saving the Earth.” And, he added: “Thirty-five dollars an acre--that’s pretty cheap.”

Tim Williams, another fifth-grader, was angry when he heard about trees being cut down, displacing resident animals.

“It might split up their families,” he said.